


Heat Beneath the Winter

by feldman



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Bars and Pubs, Dissociation, F/M, Reunion Sex, skeevy yet heartwarming grounding techniques
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-24
Updated: 2017-08-24
Packaged: 2018-12-19 07:16:37
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,933
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11892729
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/feldman/pseuds/feldman
Summary: Because sometimes a bathroom stall fuck is a sweet reunion, a tender reassurance that the stakes you’re fighting for aren’t just global, but personal.





	Heat Beneath the Winter

The Bifrost leaves a steaming mark in the turf next to the car park, the vapor rising into the overcast haze of late afternoon. It's no more disorienting than the churn of memories in the back of Bruce's brain.

He's disconnected like he's just slept off a high fever, jumbled like when he woke up in a bloody puddle of freezing slush to find that everything, and nothing, had changed. There's no pain...and he shouldn’t trust that.

"I told you, did I not?" Thor claps Bruce's shoulder as they enter the pub, "Heimdall sent us to our friends--or at least one, to start."

After all that went down on Asgard, the time he'd spent coasting, peering out of someone else's eyes, he doesn't feel the weight of the years until he sees Steve in the doorway to the snug at the side of the bar. Even the impressive shag of his honey brown beard can't hide how haggard he looks.

Steve offers a hand to shake, but once Bruce makes contact he’s pulled into a bear hug. At a loss, he pats Steve's back awkwardly. With a manly sniff Steve moves on to Thor, and their embrace is even more tender despite ending with resounding back thumps. He beckons them into the enclosed booth.

Bruce hesitates, antsy. He’s not ready to go into a box just yet, even for a meal with long lost friends. The long and unpleasant conversation ahead of them doesn’t help.

"Listen, I need to hit the john first.”

Thor nods, "We shall order refreshments and food, I expect you're as hungry as I."

Steve points to the far corner of the bar, and Bruce slips between empty tables until he gets to the back hallway and locates the men's.

He huffs when he opens the door. You know you've been gone too damn long when the whiff of urinal cake makes you feel homesick.

He finishes and washes his hands, eyeing himself in the hard light of the mirror as he methodically works the lather and rinses them off. He turns to dry them, and the next thing he knows his elbow is drawn back to throw a punch.

Leaning against the paper towel dispenser, chapped lips parted, is Natasha.

Bruce swears.

Her chin ever so slightly juts.

A chill passes through him when he realizes his curse was half in Sakaaran-- _fuckin’ spike-swarm_ \--and he shakes his head against it, drawing out a long breathy, “shhhhit,” as a corrective.

“Yeah.” She takes one measured step toward him and indicates his fist, "I do owe you one."

Bruce squints at her and lowers his arm. "Thought you said we were even?"

Expression fades from her face, leaving pure analysis. He wipes his wet hands on his pants, and lets her look. Her hair is bleached, and frizzed at the ends from humidity, and she's dressed for motorcycle travel. She takes in his jacket and t-shirt, his trousers and vans, with a smirk that doesn't reach her eyes. A notch appears between her brows and she steps closer still, taking his jaw in her hand.

She asks, wary, "How long was he fronting?"

He asks in turn, "How long have I been gone?" That's all it takes to wound her.

The pads of her fingers scrape along his throat as she draws her hand back, but he catches her wrist, and doesn't let her retreat.

He can smell her over the soap and industrial scents in the lavatory, a trace of unfamiliar perfume and the salt of her skin. She shakes her head with frustration and chagrin, eyes already bloodshot. He'd always expected that she'd cry prettily, and she undoubtedly can, but she never has for him. It's always been this messy swollen fight with herself as her emotions rip through her facade.

"I'm very sorry," she says thickly, and she slowly twists her wrist toward breaking the hold, maybe just to point out that she'll go as soon as he lets her.

Bruce uses his other hand to unzip the sleeve of her leather up her forearm, and then brings her bared skin to his nose to inhale her. It hits him like hunger, like a rush.

Her throat clicks on a swallow.

Her hand is open, fingers poised, and he drags his mouth across her palm and feels the vibration of her fingerprint sing over the edge of his bottom teeth.

Natasha lays her other hand on his chest and presses gently.

He doesn't want her gentleness, "That's all you got?"

"You know better than that," she licks her lips, eyes flicking between his to read him, weight shifting so her boots faintly squeak on the tile. "Are you feeling like yourself? Should we talk about consent?"

He snickers against her wrist, "Don't go changing just for me."

She shoves him hard.

He lets her go, raising his open hands in front of him in supplication. But he can't wipe the grin from his face. Just looking at her, the salt of her skin on his tongue, is like a benediction. Maybe he does want her gentleness after all, but he wants her ferocity too, loves when she pushes as much as when she coaxes.

She squares her shoulders, and walks past him into the last stall.

He takes his time, giving her a moment to dry her eyes and plot her moves. Giving himself a moment to think about walking away. He can think of fifty reasons to leave, from petty to noble, and yet none of them make his feet falter as he follows. Walking away has only ever delayed solving a problem. Doesn’t mean he isn’t tempted. But they don’t have time for those kinds of games.

Before turning to face her, he carefully slides the lock and says, "Missed you."

"I'd add 'with every hit so far' but that's not actually true," she's taken on the false brightness of mocking her own pain, "so it's safe to say I missed you too."

"In both senses," he sucks in a breath when her cool palm settles on his nape. Bruce lets her turn him and back him against the wall, lets her pull his mouth to hers just like the last time he saw her. He spreads his hands against the solid plaster, grounded, but he still feels like he's tumbling into thin air.

The kiss is chaste for a long moment as he drags in a lungful of her scent, her fingers skating through the stubble of his shorn hair. He's the first to offer a small lick to her upper lip, and she groans and slides her hands under the shoulders of his jacket. She squeezes and he lets his hands come off the wall, lets her skin his jacket off.

His hands ride along as she hooks his jacket on the door and doffs hers to hang over it, touching the hard bone of her elbow, brushing up her arm to graze her neck, skimming just under the collar of her shirt. She presses him back to the wall again.

“Tell me what happened.”

Bruce knows she's not asking about Asgard, she's asking about the well in Sokovia, and afterward. “Would that I could.”

Her lower lids tighten. It feels like thumbscrews, like the delicious weight of her pinning him. You think asceticism is the answer, and then you really lose track of your body and realize you’re full of crap. 

“Last couple years, it's been like a scrambled cable channel.” He's distracted by the sound of her breathing, losing track of his metaphor and just letting words spill out, “I climbed out of the trunk, but I still wasn't driving.”

“Shit.”

Her hair is so warm near the scalp it's like burrowing under covers.

“You're compromised--”

“When aren't I?”

“--serious, you’re really squirrelly, Bruce--”

He laughs, “Compromise is good in a relationship.”

She cups his neck from both sides, thumbs tucked behind his ears, framing the hinges of his jaw. “Willful misunderstanding is as bad a look on you as Tony's spare outfit. And maybe we should talk about this relationship you're referring to, before I take advantage in your current state.”

“Taking advantage of me kinda counts as negotiation for us, right?”

The look she chastens him with is sober, mission focused, her hands resting down on his shoulders. “It's bad, isn't it? What brought you back.”

“Thor brought me back, but…what we're facing…” Bruce shakes his head, eyes closing against the motion but unable to stop, “It's big and it’s ugly.”

“Get while the getting's good.” She cradles the base of his skull and stills the motion. It’s like he can feel her sad fondness seep into his skin.

“Are we? Good?” He traces Natasha’s cheekbone with his thumb, feathery light on the delicate skin around the orbit of her eye. He wonders if she will ever get the chance to develop laugh lines. “Or should we just head back to our friends now?”

Her chuckle is bitter. He can taste the anger glowing like a coal under ash. “Steve doesn’t know I’ve been tailing him. Things got ugly while you were away, Ross did a brief stint as Secretary of State before leaving ‘to spend more time with his family’--”

The snort that comes out of Bruce is ugly, but satisfying.

“Silver lining,” she acknowledges with a smirk like heat lightning glimmering. “The Accords were a trainwreck across several continents; bombings, sniping, cold war secrets like leftover landmines... Tony’s the sole Avenger left in the public eye, and he's on double-secret probation.”

Bruce feels the information sink in like coordinates. Now that they're back on earth, he's on deck for local politics and strategy, but that’s not the main reason he asks, “And you?”

“I'm here to fight the good fight,” Natasha tries for sardonic. Interestingly, she misses it. Even more interestingly, she grins like she doesn't care.

“Don't take this the wrong way,” Bruce says, “but I adore you.”

“I bet you say that to all the spies you meet in toilets.”

“Only ones who've watched me shake off.”

She laughs, so low and rich it's obscenely gorgeous, and his knees lock against the wave of it washing over him. She says his name, but before he can reply she uses her limbs and leverage to turn him, depositing him on the porcelain throne and stepping close between his splayed legs.

The tank is cold under his shoulder blades but he leans up into her hot kiss, and it's slow and dirty like they never got around to before when they were on their best behavior. Then she settles on his lap, heavier than she looks, all bone and muscle. He squares up beneath her, wraps his arms around her, and something settles in his chest.

Natasha slides her mouth along his jaw to murmur in his ear, “Are you using me as a grounding technique?”

Bruce’s throat catches, but it seems that’s answer enough.

She rolls her hips along his hardness, “Is it working?”

He rubs his cheek against her in a nod, and feels her ribs expand and then release a long cleansing sigh. He tightens the embrace, burrowing his face against her neck. After a long moment she speaks, warm breath on his skin.

“We can just do this…”

He clears his throat. His erection, like the furtive shift of her hips, is another unspoken fact between them. “Or?”

“Or we could fuck.”

He pulls his head back, and meets her clear gaze. “And if we circumvent the apocalypse? If the dust settles, and we find we both made it out alive?”

Natasha traces his features with her fingertips, like she’s memorizing a blueprint for a mission, or his skull is a safe she needs to expertly crack. He’s never been able to figure out what she sees when she looks at him. His hypotheses have all been wrong, but he keeps refining them and coming back, because he wants to understand her in turn.

She gives him a lopsided grin, slowly dismounting his lap with her signature cocky grace. “We can fuck then, too,” she says, and it’s no desperate play this time. It’s not denial of the bitter, it’s embracing of the sweet.

Bruce rises up, seeking her kiss, and she catches him against her. She’s got a fist wrapped in his shirt as if to rip it from him, but her mouth is lush, and she’s making quiet sounds in her throat that make his whole body ache with pleasure. Too disbelieving to be groans, too happy to be whimpers, they’re sounds of surprised delight.

He knows because he’s making them too, furtive hitches in his chest as more of his skin touches hers, an appreciation of each beautiful moment as it rises and passes, the taste of her in his mouth and the strength of her pulling him close, the tangle of their fingers on her belt buckle, and on his zipper. She licks her palm to stroke him, pink flash of tongue. He pushes up her shirt and suckles a nipple right through the mesh panel of her bra cup.

Her jeans are tight even unzipped, but he gets a hand down them anyway. She’s so wet his mouth waters, and her own hand falters when he starts circling her clit in earnest.

The notch between her eyebrows reappears, pure concentration as she’s watching him with hooded eyes. He slows and kisses her, and when she whimpers he presses his forehead to hers, “Tell me what you like.”

She strokes him again, “I like that you’re not tall.”

“Not right now, no.”

“It means we can do this,” she pulls his hand from her pants and spins on the stacked heel of her boot. She wiggles her jeans down one hip, then the other, and plants her hands on the graffitied tile wall.

Bruce smooths his hands over her ass as she cants her hips and gives a needy sound of encouragement. The lighting is terrible, he can feel more than see the shallow dimples on her sacrum, but that doesn’t matter when he takes a knee and buries his face in the hot soft wet beauty of her.

She cuts off mid-curse and and just groans, the back of her belt jutting under his chin and the tang and musk of her in his head. She bends to offer herself up, the sound of grating porcelain as she leans on the tank lid. He slips fingers next to his mouth and she navigates him with a few words breathed like prayers. He swallows and she keeps flowing sweeter, rocking against his nose, riding her clit on the flat of his tongue, and now her knees lock and he feels her break and shudder.

He rises up, and the crack of his knee shakes a breathless chuckle from her.

Then he’s pressing into her, setting off another clench of aftershock. She guides his hand around her waist, fingers weaving, and braces them both with one arm propped against the wall, palm spread between scrawled cocks that look frankly neolithic.

Maybe this is how the world ends, humans fucking like they always have, spinning into the dark.

She’s warm against his chest, her head nudging back into the crook of his shoulder.

He goes slow, goes easy, because he doesn’t want this to end. It’s nothing he’d pictured or feared, a men’s room in Scotland, her hiccuping panting noises as she tries to be quiet and fails, the bruises she’s digging into his forearm, the clink of her belt buckle as they rock together.

“Yeah, yeah, come on,” she croons, squeezing him, and the edge crumbles beneath him and sends him plummeting, flying, flaring like a sunspot, her blonde hair up his nose and his toes gripping as if to dig into the earth through the soles of his shoes. Shaky. Sweaty. High.

Natasha turns again in his embrace and the kiss she gives him is everything they haven’t been able to say, and don’t have time left to fuck around denying. “We good?”

“Yeah,” Bruce gulps air, “we’re good. For now.”

Her grin would still be wicked even if her cheeks weren’t blazing red, the hair at her temples damp, “For now.”

She gives him a peck on the tip of his nose. She steps back, pushes her jeans down farther and takes a seat.

Bruce stands there for a long moment. She gathers a wad of toilet paper and hands it to him. He cleans up and puts himself back together as best he can while she pisses.

He helps her with her jacket like a gentleman, and gives her a last lingering kiss before unlocking the door to the stall. She watches him wash his hands and face in the sink, meeting his curious look in the mirror.

“Get me the curry and a whisky sour.” She pulls out a lipstick and with a few swipes her flushed swollen lips look respectably fake. “Bruce?”

He turns to look straight at her, instead of through the mirror. She meets his eyes.

It feels like the weightlessness of apogee, one of those pauses where there’s no sound inside his head, so the sensory input resonates clearly. This person he can see and smell, his nerves tingling from her, his heart aching with fullness.

“See you on the other side.”

He lays a kiss on her cheek, and he knows it’s the last one until they’ve seen this through to the end. “I’ll be waiting, Natasha.”


End file.
